


Echo

by Valaxiom



Series: Mercy Needs Some Support [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Boy howdy I love to Suffer, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Jesse and Angela as good friends, M/M, Perfectionism, Post-Recall, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 03:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8354839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valaxiom/pseuds/Valaxiom
Summary: When Angela returns to Watchpoint: Gibraltar after the Overwatch Recall, she's forced to confront some of the poor decisions she made in the past. Jesse McCree is a surprising source of common sense in a world that has long since ceased to make sense. Rated T for language.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Heyooo, thanks to university and a general lack of motivation, it's been a while since I posted anything. Here's a oneshot to make up for my sins.

Angela had never been terribly fond of the Gibraltar Watchpoint. She hadn’t liked the humid climate or the ‘rustic’ feel of being trapped in the middle of nowhere. Especially now, with the Recall recently initiated by Winston, the base felt far too large for their tiny group. It was isolated and perpetually damp from the crashing waves of the nearby sea, and the sprawling compound was full of memories from the golden days of Overwatch. Good memories and bad jostled for space in the halls of the base. Mercy didn’t like the feeling of all the ghosts of her friends whispering to her from beyond their graves.

Angela Ziegler walked through the long, grey halls and shivered despite her sweater. Even with Winston’s dedicated caretaking, the base was a mess. Entire wings had stood unused for years, and it showed. She could have sworn that she’d seen a rat in the hangar, and there were thick layers of dust in most of the dormitories. The Watchpoint’s essentials remained in good shape- the kitchen, Winston’s lab, the main dormitory, the communications room. But in many of the lesser-used and out of the way areas, the decay had taken hold.

Her old laboratory was still in place, although the most valuable equipment and supplies had long since been removed. She’d have to restock soon, before they resumed minor operations. Angela wouldn’t even consider letting agents go into the field without medical facilities that met with her standards. Mercy hefted her clipboard and went to work taking inventory.

Genji and McCree found her hours later, as she methodically checked off items on an extensive list.

“Oh, hello,” she said distractedly. “Tell me, have you seen any of the infirmary bed sheets? They were blue and stain-proof. It would be a shame to have to replace them, they were very useful. They appear to be missing, and I do not think that they would have been removed from this base. There wouldn’t be any point to that.”

“Angie? How long’ve you been up here for?” asked McCree.

“We’ve been looking everywhere for you, it is dinner time,” said Genji.

“Already? Interesting,” she said. “I’ll be down soon, I just need to finish up here.”

“How long have you been working on your list?” Genji’s impassive faceplate peeked over her shoulder at the clipboard. “Goodness, this thing is the size of a dictionary! And your writing is so small! How much more do you have to get done?”

“Well, depending on the state of the back room, I’d say... this is probably about one third of it.”

“Nope,” said McCree decisively. “Not gonna happen, not tonight, anyway.  You need to eat, and probably sleep as well, if I remember correctly. How many times did Morrison have to drag you from your lab in the dead of night so that you’d finally get some shut-eye?”

Mercy flushed, feeling irritated despite, or perhaps because of, the gunslinger’s gentle tone. “I am not a child, Agent McCree. And Jack Morrison is no longer here. I must continue my work, please leave me.” She pointedly turned her back on them, pretending to count bandages on the counter in front of her. Genji shrugged and said something about not needing to eat anyways before silently slipping away. McCree stayed. Angela could smell his awful cigars. She was always telling him to quit, even back when they were both barely adults and newly recruited to Overwatch.

“You didn’t fail them, you know,” said Jesse quietly. Angela froze. “It wasn’t your fault, Ange. There was nothing anyone could have done. Some things are inevitable. Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes were a fire, and all the rest of us could ever do was stand aside and let them burn, or go down in flames with them. Those selfish bastards loved and hated each other enough to literally set their own world on fire. Overwatch was never going to be enough to save them.”

Mercy’s shoulders sagged. “I thought of them as family. I thought of us all as family. How could they do that? To each other? To _us_?”

“They were like the shitty overprotective dads that I never had, bless their crazy asses. I never had much of a family before I got recruited here, and from what I gather, neither did you. They gave us a chance to have a group of people who would love and accept us, then they took it away. I’m not honestly sure if I can ever forgive them for that, dead men or not.”

“Jesse, I am not so sure that they are dead,” said Angela hollowly. The cowboy stared at her.

“You’re kiddin’, right? That base in Switzerland lit up like a goddamn Fourth of July fireworks display. No one made it out, not even the techs and noncoms. We don’t even know what hit it.”

“A bomb,” said Angela. “There must have been a bomb inside the base. Either someone brought it in, or it had been planted beforehand, but the source of the explosion came from within. Headquarters had the best anti-aircraft technology in the world, so any incoming missile or projectile would have been identified and destroyed.”

“But that still doesn’t change the fact that everyone died.”

Angela stayed silent.

McCree sighed, rubbing his face tiredly. Angela could see new lines in the corners of his eyes and the plane of his forehead- Jesse hadn’t been living a soft life for the last couple years. Not that he ever had. Not that any of them ever had.

“I was one of the first responders to the blast. There were... remains everywhere, mostly too scattered to fully determine identities and conduct a thorough investigation of what happened. It was chaos. I had to prioritize, but although I searched through that rubble for hours, I couldn’t find any survivors. At least, that’s what I told the UN.”

Jesse was staring at her now, and to Angela’s intense shame, she could see hope in his eyes.

“Technically, he was dead by the time I found him. Gabriel... he was a mess, to put it lightly. Third degree burns, broken limbs, tremendous impact trauma. I could not even identify the actual cause of death; there were too many wounds to tell. He was cold,” her voice broke on the last word.

“What about Jack? Did you find anything from him?”

Angela shook her head. “That’s where it gets odd. I found pieces of his old coat near Gabriel, but none of the remains had his DNA. I think that he escaped, but I don’t know why he never tried to contact any of us. The idea that he didn’t trust us enough to tell us that he was alive _hurts._ He either was literally disintegrated off the face of the earth or he walked away and left the organization he’d helped to build from the ground up in a pile a rubble. We collected dental records for all the victims and identified all of the dead. The only ones not accounted for were Jack... and Gabe.”

“What did you do with his body? Why did you hide it?”

“Him,” said Angela. She looked down at the grimy floor. “He came back, Jesse. I brought him back.”

“You _what_?”

“It was a risk, and I wasn’t thinking clearly- I’d just lost two of my best friends and countless colleagues, and I did not sleep. I am not sure if I ate. All I know is that I worked for days, until one day, after I finally passed out from exhaustion, I woke up and the body- Gabriel Reyes- was gone. There were no signs of a break in, or a fight. It just looked like his body had stumbled awake and left.”

“You turned my boss into a fuckin’ zombie? Angela, what the hell! He was our friend, even if he was a complete ass, how could you do that to him?”

“I was selfish!”

“No kidding. God, Ange, they’d have hung you as a witch a century ago. My granny would have called you a goddamned devil for this stunt. No wonder you never told anyone, you’d probably face life imprisonment at best if this ever got out. Let alone the fact that you brought a dead person back to life. Aw man. So you’re telling me that some weird zombie version of Reyes is out there, just hanging out?”

“Not quite. The regeneration process was untested and purely theoretical. I know something went wrong. I remember some of the possible side effects- a constant cancerous state, of regrowing and destroying cells. The subject would essentially be trapped in a half-life, living in the shadows.”

“So what happened to him?”

“I think Reyes might be Reaper.”

“You’re kidding me. Talon Reaper? Big guy, looks like he shops at Hot Topic, trying to do a really shitty cosplay of a Nazgul from Lord of the Rings?”

“A lot of Reaper’s observed capabilities match some of the possible symptoms of the resurrection process I performed on Gabriel.  The disappearing into smoke, the teleporting, the healing factor. It all adds up. In addition to that, his basic body structure and rather unique tendency to dual-wield shotguns are suspiciously like Reyes’. Finally, there’s the fact that until six years ago, Reaper did not exist.”

“So that psycho is Gabe? How the hell did that happen?”

“I don’t know! Maybe something went wrong when he came back, or Talon got to him. I honestly don’t know. The only real thing we can be sure of is that that monster is just an echo of the man who was our friend. The Gabriel Reyes we knew would never stoop to the level Reaper regularly inhabits. It’s just not possible. This is why I haven’t mentioned it to anyone up until now.”

“You need to tell the others, or at least Winston. Even if all you got are suspicions and guilty admissions of your own human weakness, that’s still better than leaving us all totally unprepared. How ‘bout after dinner, you and me and Winston and Reinhardt and Tracer all sit down and pool what we know of the past. We might be able to find a way forward, or at least puzzle out some of the mess that happened back then. Alright?”

“Yes, but... I’m not proud of what I did. My actions were a blatant disregard for the oath I swore and the people I was supposed to protect.”

“On that happy note, I think Lena made fish and chips for dinner. Come on, let’s head to the kitchen.”

Angela left her clipboard on the counter and followed her friend away from the ghosts of her past.

**Author's Note:**

> Ouch, my heart. I love Angela and I love the Team As Family trope.


End file.
